Motor Mouth: Did the pandemic kill the auto show?

Article content

If you’ve been shopping for a new car this year, you know that virtually all auto shows have been cancelled, yet another victim of the pandemic. The lack of any annual exposition of the latest and greatest in automotive hardware brings with it a spate of questions, not the least of which is whether they will come back, and where one gets the information needed to go about buying a car. 

Article content

Well, the answer to the latter is easy: Postmedia’s most recent Driving into the Future roundtable detailed all the vehicles you would have seen at a car show near you. As to whether we’ll ever get to visit a car show again, well, that’s a more complicated question…

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Motor Mouth: Did the pandemic kill the auto show? Back to video

My life used to revolve around Detroit. Long before Zoom rendered valet parking obsolete and the pandemic made any public gathering a no-no, Detroit was quite literally my everything. It was the start of my business year, the focal point of everything I would write about for the next 12 months, and a place to be educated, mentored and networked. It was the most important destination in the world, the place to be seen and, truth be told all these many years later, the best party in the land.  

Article content

And, by Detroit, I mean its North American International Auto Show. Indeed, it is a measure of the import of the annual January gathering at Cobo Hall that, despite the Motor City being the epicentre of everything automotive, when one asked a colleague whether they were going to Detroit, or had they seen the news out of Detroit, everyone knew you were referring to the show, not the city.

Fast-forward to 2021 and “Detroit” has now been delayed, rescheduled, cancelled and, finally, but perhaps most ignominiously of all, turned into something called Motor Bella , the automotive industry equivalent of a “show and shine” in a Longo’s parking lot. It is, not a word of a lie, a humiliation more complete that Katherine Heigl having to do Vicks’ ZzzQuil commercials to “stay relevant.” From commanding the entire automotive world’s stage; to a parking lot somewhere in backwater Pontiac, Michigan. How the mighty have fallen.

Article content

And, thanks to the coronavirus, auto shows all over the world have followed suit. From New York to Tokyo, Vancouver to Montreal, the expositions by which automakers have long lured auto-journalists and consumers alike to their wares have, like all public gatherings, succumbed to a spike protein no one saw coming. The industry has already survived more than 12 months with no auto shows — it’s looking increasingly like 12 more — and the automotive world hasn’t stopped turning. So, one has to wonder if they’ll ever come back. And if they don’t, will anyone notice?

That’s not a trivial question, the auto show having been, for more than a century, a focal point in mainstream consumerism. Intenders went to shop cars, parents took kids for social outings and, if you just happened to be, say, an impressionable pre-teen who had to stand on his tippy-toes to attempt passing the 12-year-old minimum that allowed admission sans adult accompaniment, well, you stuffed newspapers in your sneakers and puffed up your Montreal Expos baseball cap because that was the only way you were going to actually lay eyes on the new Sting Ray you read about in last month’s Car and Driver . Like I said, auto shows were, without a doubt, the most mainstream of consumer events.  

Article content

And they’re on the cusp of disappearing. Indeed, there’s no question there will be fewer auto shows, the more pertinent query being if any will survive. Even those that do manage to soldier on will be severely diminished.

And it was my fault. OK, not actually me all by my lonesome, but my industry, the lamestream media, if I’m allowed to quote The Donald without raising too much ire. Somewhere along the line, automotive journalists — and their enablers-in-chief, public relations corporate communicators — hijacked the auto show. Those corporate communicators   — infernal lobbyists, if we were referencing Washington politics again — realizing that the Detroit, not to mention Frankfurt, Tokyo, Geneva and Paris shows, were an ideal backdrop to make a marketing smash.

Article content

What was once a mere sales tool to get punters into cars had become an automotive theatre of the absurd. One year Jeep — or, more accurately, Bob Lutz — drove the then-all-new Grand Cherokee through one of Cobo Hall’s plate glass windows . There have been water fountains on display, car-shaped, helium-filled mini-dirigibles floating over the show floor and, in one of the most memorable displays of corporate dictum triumphing over mortal fear, a couple of Nissan marketing execs once rappelled down from Cobo’s ceiling just so they could introduce a new SUV. Even normally staid Mercedes-Benz once created a real ice rink in its display area, bringing out sled dogs, hockey players and figure skaters just to bring attention to its “revolutionary” 4Matic all-wheel-drive system. Budgets soared into the millions, the largesse always justified by the press generated.

Article content

Will auto shows ever come back—and if they don't, will anyone notice?

Until it wasn’t. Truth be told, auto shows, at least those claiming press credentials, have been on the decline for years. Detroit, for instance, faced a desertion of automakers long before the pandemic hit, mainly because companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Audi realized that no matter their efforts, Michiganians weren’t going to buy foreign luxury cars. The pandemic, and the virtual “meetings” it has engendered, was simply the final nail in the coffin.  

The question to be answered, then, is whether auto shows will continue on as mere expositions for automakers to market their products to the general public. Automobiles remain the second-largest purchase most households will ever make and yet, as the successes that automakers have enjoyed despite lockdowns attest, Canadians are increasingly willing to let their computers do the shopping. Will the need to place “bums in seats” continue to legitimize the auto show as public spectacle? Or have we, thanks to the coronavirus, become so used to the “online experience” that virtual shopping has become acceptable even for a $40,000 or $50,000 automobile?  

Article content

So, the big question: Will auto shows survive? Here in Canada, I think Toronto’s might. The CIAS, despite the “International” in its name, has always focused on selling cars; any PR effort has always been an afterthought. Almost certainly, Montreal’s Salon de l’Auto will, our Quebecois cousins mad for cars, and the show’s organizers long having focused on the base mechanics of moving metal. Beyond those, I simply have no clue.

South of the border, I think Detroit is donesville and New York questionable. Even the LA Auto Show and AutoMobility conference — the new “Detroit” for much of the international media — will be severely curtailed. Auto shows will survive if they simply go back to selling cars and trucks. But the auto show as a media event is as dead as the dodo, a victim of high-speed connectivity, dramatically cut budgets and the Zoom revolution.

I, for one, will miss the party.